M2 Optics Inc., founded in 2001 and headquartered in Raleigh, North Corolina, has announced the immediate worldwide availability of SWITCHLIGHT, a multi-functional optical switching device. The new solution is designed for hosting and colocation services providers as well as enterprise organizations.
Based on a patent-pending design, SWITCHLIGHT utilizes both active and passive optical components to perform the following functions:
- Switching (all-optical, latching, asymmetric switching)
- Monitoring (passively capture and route traffic to analysis devices)
- Amplifying (boost signals for monitoring and multicasting applications)
- Replicating (multicast and broadcast)
- Tapping (utilize “intelligent” passive optical tapping)
Clients can customize their systems to include one or all of these functions in a small 1 or 2U form factor. As these needs change over time, SWITCHLIGHT can be expanded to increase density or add functionality.
The flexibility of SWITCHLIGHT would address a wide array of applications from ultra-low latency networking to low-cost monitoring of optical access networks. With support for multimode fiber, latching switches, port replication and optical multicasting, SWITCHLIGHT provides tightly integrated functionality that many other layer one optical devices would lack.
SWITCHLIGHT Element Manager included
The M2 Optics SWITCHLIGHT device has the ability to perform all of these functions under LIGHTCLICK, the SWITCHLIGHT Element Manager included with every system. Based on HTML 5, LIGHTCLICK provides rapid system reporting, point-and-click provisioning, and enhanced administrative control. Additionally, LIGHTCLICK comes standard with multiple APIs to seamlessly integrate into existing and future environments.
“While customization scares many companies due to the increased cost and complexity, we made SWITCHLIGHT™ flexible enough to embrace customization while remaining cost-effective,” said O.J. Johnston, General Manager of M2 Optics Switching Systems division. “Also, the combination of SWITCHLIGHT and LIGHTCLICK enables us to address everything from 100+Gbps test environments requiring simple scripting languages to next-generation networks built on SDN architectures.”
